Peace and War
- Thread starter Matthias
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The Martin Luther King, Jr. commitment card.
www.loveoutloudws.com
MLK Commitment Card — Love Out Loud
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited volunteers working alongside him to sign the following commitment card:
www.loveoutloudws.com
“It is noteworthy that between 100 and 313 no Christian writers, to our knowledge, approved of Christian participation in warfare. In fact, all those who wrote on the subject disapproved of the practice.”
(John Driver, How Christians Made Peace With War, p. 14)
(John Driver, How Christians Made Peace With War, p. 14)
“Cure Thy children’s warring madness.”
(Harry F. Fosdick, God of Grace and God of Glory)
I grew up singing this hymn. Searching hymnals online, I have the impression that so did many, many others.
”One way to know the health of a church is by listening to the theology of their songs and by observing the passion with which they sing them. Too often it is one or the other: Sound theology and little passion or passion but unsound theology. Sing what and how you believe.” - Burke Parsons
(Harry F. Fosdick, God of Grace and God of Glory)
I grew up singing this hymn. Searching hymnals online, I have the impression that so did many, many others.
”One way to know the health of a church is by listening to the theology of their songs and by observing the passion with which they sing them. Too often it is one or the other: Sound theology and little passion or passion but unsound theology. Sing what and how you believe.” - Burke Parsons
“One of the abiding difficulties of living as a disciple of Jesus and attempting to teach others about the way of Jesus is the wall that one meets when Jesus’ way of peacemaking comes up for discussion. It appears that the world has so thoroughly groomed us in the way of violence that I might as well be an alien from another planet when I speak of this - even among other Christians.”
jesuscollective.com
Jesus And Peace
The way of Jesus has always been a way in which peace is both the means and the end. If his life was marked by peace, then peace isn’t an afterthought of our discipleship but core to it.
jesuscollective.com
“At 2:45 a.m. on Monday August 6, 1945, three American B-29 bombers of the 509th Composite Group took off from an airfield on the Pacific Island of Tinian, 1500 miles south of Japan. ... At 7:15 a.m., the bomber crew armed the bomb, and the plane began it’s ascent to the bombing altitude of 31,000 feet.
Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto awoke at 5:00 a.m. Hiroshima time, which was an hour behind Tinian time. Tanimoto was the pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, and ‘a small man, quick to talk, laugh, and cry.’ Tanimoto was a thoughtful and cautious man who had sent his wife and baby to the relative safety of a northern suburb. Tanimoto remained in the city …
At 8:14 a.m. Hiroshima time, the Enola Gay appeared over the city ... Just after 8:15 a.m., Ferebee released Little Boy from its restraints …
Little Boy fell almost six miles in 43 seconds before detonating at an altitude of 2,000 feet. The bomb exploded with the force of more than 15,000 tons of TNT directly over a surgical clinic, 500 feet from the Aioi Bridge. Less than two percent of the bomb’s uranium achieved fission, but the resulting reaction engulfed the city in a blinding flash of heat and light. The temperature at ground level reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second. The bomb vaporized people half a mile away from ground zero. Bronze statues melted, roof tiles fused together, and the exposed skin of people miles away burned from the intense infrared energy unleashed. At least 80,000 people died instantly.
Reverend Tanimoto saw ‘a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky … from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun.’ Because Tanimoto was two miles from the epicenter of the explosition, he had a few seconds to throw himself between two large rocks in the garden of his friends house. …
From the Enola Gay, Tibbets and his crew saw ‘a giant purple mushroom’ that ‘had already risen to a height of 45,000 feet, three miles above our altitude, and was still boiling upward like something terribly alive.’ Though the plane was already miles away, the cloud looked like it would engulf the bomber that had spawned it. ‘Even more fearsome,’ to Tibbets, ‘was the sight on the ground below. At the base of the cloud, fires were springing up everywhere amid a turbulent mass of smoke that had the appearance of bubbling hot tar … The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire.’
In the minutes, hours and days that followed the bombing, survivors in Hiroshima tried desperately to locate loved ones and care for the thousands of wounded. Some people exhibited horrible burns, while others who outwardly appeared unscathed later died painful deaths from radiation poisoning. Thousands of people were buried in the debris of their homes. Most structures in the city had been constructed of wood with roof tiles. All but a handful of concrete structures in the city center had been completely leveled. …”
www.nationalww2museum.org
Seventy-nine years ago on this date, evil was returned for evil. Christians with a crude nuclear device destroyed the lives of Christian and non-Christian enemies. Worse was yet, is yet, still to come.
War isn’t the Messiah’s teaching for his disciples.
Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto awoke at 5:00 a.m. Hiroshima time, which was an hour behind Tinian time. Tanimoto was the pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, and ‘a small man, quick to talk, laugh, and cry.’ Tanimoto was a thoughtful and cautious man who had sent his wife and baby to the relative safety of a northern suburb. Tanimoto remained in the city …
At 8:14 a.m. Hiroshima time, the Enola Gay appeared over the city ... Just after 8:15 a.m., Ferebee released Little Boy from its restraints …
Little Boy fell almost six miles in 43 seconds before detonating at an altitude of 2,000 feet. The bomb exploded with the force of more than 15,000 tons of TNT directly over a surgical clinic, 500 feet from the Aioi Bridge. Less than two percent of the bomb’s uranium achieved fission, but the resulting reaction engulfed the city in a blinding flash of heat and light. The temperature at ground level reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second. The bomb vaporized people half a mile away from ground zero. Bronze statues melted, roof tiles fused together, and the exposed skin of people miles away burned from the intense infrared energy unleashed. At least 80,000 people died instantly.
Reverend Tanimoto saw ‘a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky … from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun.’ Because Tanimoto was two miles from the epicenter of the explosition, he had a few seconds to throw himself between two large rocks in the garden of his friends house. …
From the Enola Gay, Tibbets and his crew saw ‘a giant purple mushroom’ that ‘had already risen to a height of 45,000 feet, three miles above our altitude, and was still boiling upward like something terribly alive.’ Though the plane was already miles away, the cloud looked like it would engulf the bomber that had spawned it. ‘Even more fearsome,’ to Tibbets, ‘was the sight on the ground below. At the base of the cloud, fires were springing up everywhere amid a turbulent mass of smoke that had the appearance of bubbling hot tar … The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire.’
In the minutes, hours and days that followed the bombing, survivors in Hiroshima tried desperately to locate loved ones and care for the thousands of wounded. Some people exhibited horrible burns, while others who outwardly appeared unscathed later died painful deaths from radiation poisoning. Thousands of people were buried in the debris of their homes. Most structures in the city had been constructed of wood with roof tiles. All but a handful of concrete structures in the city center had been completely leveled. …”
The Most Fearsome Sight: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Seventy-nine years ago on this date, evil was returned for evil. Christians with a crude nuclear device destroyed the lives of Christian and non-Christian enemies. Worse was yet, is yet, still to come.
War isn’t the Messiah’s teaching for his disciples.
Putting a face to a name -> Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto (and his family) appeared on an American television program (This Is Your Life) on May 11, 1955. (Link provided below.) During the program, having no foreknowledge before arriving about what was going to transpire (he was mislead into thinking that he was going to be interviewed), he was introduced to Captain Robert Lewis - the co-pilot of the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945.
Caution. This may be difficult for some to watch.
”My God, what have we done?” - Robert Lewis
Caution. This may be difficult for some to watch.
”My God, what have we done?” - Robert Lewis
Reverend Tanimoto had one child at the time Hiroshima was destroyed. She was ten years old when she appeared on the television program. She was raised in a Christian home and she hated the soldiers, most of whom were Christian, who inflicted destruction on her and her neighbors.
A Christian child hating fellow Christians. Surely that isn’t something Jesus desires for his followers. Christians killing Christians doesn’t produce the love of Christ.
Her story.
“… One of the youngest survivors is Koko Tonimoto-Kondo. As a young child she was filled with hate and swore to take revenge. But as she told RFE / RI, she later had an encounter that put her on the path to reconciliation.
… Tanimoto and her mother were together when their house collapsed, trapping them in the rubble until Kondo’s crying stirred her mother back to consciousness.
‘At first she thought, “Ah, a baby is crying somewhere.” And then suddenly the crying cut off completely and then [with] her mother’s instinct she realized that it was her baby, that’s me, [and that I] could not cry any more because I could not breathe any more, Tanimoto-Kondo recalls. ‘So my mother realized and at first she asked for help but no one came. She moved little by little and finally she was able to to make a little hole [above] and she took me out of the house. When she was out she saw fires all over the place.’
Tanimoto-Kondo was uninjured. But her early memories are of the many people who were disfigured by terrible burns ... including young women who came to be known as the ‘Hiroshima Maidens.’
’Some of them, their eyes could not close, or the mouth, could not close because the lips were together with the chin,’ Tanimoto-Kondo says. ‘As a child I didn’t know where to look. I thought about it, why these girls are so ugly-looking? And I learned and found out they were other survivors of Hiroshima. They were burnt by the fire. And I said to myself when I grow up I am really going to give a big punch to whoever was on the B-29 Enola Gay, to [take] revenge.’
Then in 1955 Tanimoto-Kondo had an encounter that would have a lasting effect.
Her father had arranged to escort 25 of the disfigured young women to the United States for plastic surgery. …
While there, he was invited on a popular television show, ‘This Is Your Life,’ that would reunite him with people who had played an important role in his life.
Tanimoto-Kondo went along. ‘I could recognize many of the people who were on the show except one man,‘ she says. ‘I was only 10 and was so curious. I asked my mother, “Who is that man over there?” She told me, “The man over there, his name is Captain Robert Lewis, he was a co-pilot of the Enola Gay.”
As such, Lewis had been part of a mission considered by many to be crucial in ending the war. …
That day in the television studio, Tanimoto-Kondo watched as Lewis described how it felt to have dropped the bomb.
’Captain Lewis said [that] from the airplane he saw the city of Hiroshima [had] disappeared and he said, “My God, what have we done?” I thought he was the enemy, that man,’ Tanimoto-Kondo says. ‘But after he said the words “My God, what have we done?” I looked at his eyes and saw his tears come out and I felt so sorry, and I prayed to God: “I’m sorry, please forgive me, God, I hated this guy, but if I hate I should hate war itself, not this guy and please forgive me.”
These days Tanimoto-Kondo is one of the most prominent of the Hiroshima survivors, know as the “Hibakusha,” and frequently travels around to talk about her experiences and the need for reconciliation.
She’s also met a survivor of Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in the United States.
On the day she speaks to RFE / RI, she‘s just finished talking to a group of American college students at Hiroshima’s museum. All she can do, she says, is to lead people like them to ‘walk toward peace.’”
www.rferl.org
All she can do is lead people to walk toward peace -> All she can do is imitate Jesus.
That‘s precisely what every disciple of Jesus should be doing.
A Christian child hating fellow Christians. Surely that isn’t something Jesus desires for his followers. Christians killing Christians doesn’t produce the love of Christ.
Her story.
“… One of the youngest survivors is Koko Tonimoto-Kondo. As a young child she was filled with hate and swore to take revenge. But as she told RFE / RI, she later had an encounter that put her on the path to reconciliation.
… Tanimoto and her mother were together when their house collapsed, trapping them in the rubble until Kondo’s crying stirred her mother back to consciousness.
‘At first she thought, “Ah, a baby is crying somewhere.” And then suddenly the crying cut off completely and then [with] her mother’s instinct she realized that it was her baby, that’s me, [and that I] could not cry any more because I could not breathe any more, Tanimoto-Kondo recalls. ‘So my mother realized and at first she asked for help but no one came. She moved little by little and finally she was able to to make a little hole [above] and she took me out of the house. When she was out she saw fires all over the place.’
Tanimoto-Kondo was uninjured. But her early memories are of the many people who were disfigured by terrible burns ... including young women who came to be known as the ‘Hiroshima Maidens.’
’Some of them, their eyes could not close, or the mouth, could not close because the lips were together with the chin,’ Tanimoto-Kondo says. ‘As a child I didn’t know where to look. I thought about it, why these girls are so ugly-looking? And I learned and found out they were other survivors of Hiroshima. They were burnt by the fire. And I said to myself when I grow up I am really going to give a big punch to whoever was on the B-29 Enola Gay, to [take] revenge.’
Then in 1955 Tanimoto-Kondo had an encounter that would have a lasting effect.
Her father had arranged to escort 25 of the disfigured young women to the United States for plastic surgery. …
While there, he was invited on a popular television show, ‘This Is Your Life,’ that would reunite him with people who had played an important role in his life.
Tanimoto-Kondo went along. ‘I could recognize many of the people who were on the show except one man,‘ she says. ‘I was only 10 and was so curious. I asked my mother, “Who is that man over there?” She told me, “The man over there, his name is Captain Robert Lewis, he was a co-pilot of the Enola Gay.”
As such, Lewis had been part of a mission considered by many to be crucial in ending the war. …
That day in the television studio, Tanimoto-Kondo watched as Lewis described how it felt to have dropped the bomb.
’Captain Lewis said [that] from the airplane he saw the city of Hiroshima [had] disappeared and he said, “My God, what have we done?” I thought he was the enemy, that man,’ Tanimoto-Kondo says. ‘But after he said the words “My God, what have we done?” I looked at his eyes and saw his tears come out and I felt so sorry, and I prayed to God: “I’m sorry, please forgive me, God, I hated this guy, but if I hate I should hate war itself, not this guy and please forgive me.”
These days Tanimoto-Kondo is one of the most prominent of the Hiroshima survivors, know as the “Hibakusha,” and frequently travels around to talk about her experiences and the need for reconciliation.
She’s also met a survivor of Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in the United States.
On the day she speaks to RFE / RI, she‘s just finished talking to a group of American college students at Hiroshima’s museum. All she can do, she says, is to lead people like them to ‘walk toward peace.’”
Japan: For One Hiroshima Survivor, A Journey From Hate To Reconciliation
People pray before memorial to victims in Hiroshima's Peace Park on 6 August Sixty years ago, a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It was aimed at bringing the war to an end and avoiding an invasion that would cost the lives of many U.S. soldiers. And...
www.rferl.org
All she can do is lead people to walk toward peace -> All she can do is imitate Jesus.
That‘s precisely what every disciple of Jesus should be doing.
This is a distraught man. There is very little life in him.
”The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundatly.”
(John 10:10, NET)
”As an Air Force chaplain I blessed the men who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All I can say today is that I was wrong.”
“Father George Zebelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of “Fat Man.” The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock - flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul: ‘My God what have we done?’ Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.”
***
“THE DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIANS IN WAR was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes in a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians - and I said nothing.”
www.plough.com
His speech shouldn’t be rushed through. For that reason, I’m going to break it down into a series of posts, with the hope that it will change the hearts and minds of some, especially among those who urge others - contra the Messiah - to kill their enemies.
“Father George Zebelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of “Fat Man.” The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock - flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul: ‘My God what have we done?’ Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.”
***
“THE DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIANS IN WAR was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes in a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians - and I said nothing.”
Blessing the Bombs
Zabelka served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.
www.plough.com
His speech shouldn’t be rushed through. For that reason, I’m going to break it down into a series of posts, with the hope that it will change the hearts and minds of some, especially among those who urge others - contra the Messiah - to kill their enemies.
Zabelka speech continued.
“I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary - told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)
I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism - active nonviolent resistance to evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, ‘Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers.’”
(Ibid.)
“I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary - told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)
I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan. His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism - active nonviolent resistance to evil. I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, ‘Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers.’”
(Ibid.)
Zabelka speech continued.
”I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: ‘Love your enemies. Return good for evil.’ I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.
For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.
War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.”
(Ibid.)
”I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: ‘Love your enemies. Return good for evil.’ I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.
For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.
War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.”
(Ibid.)
Zabelka speech continued.
”The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.”
(Ibid.)
”The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.”
(Ibid.)
Zabelka speech continued.
”SO THE WORLD IS WATCHING TODAY. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving one’s enemies.”
(Ibid.)
”SO THE WORLD IS WATCHING TODAY. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ. What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving one’s enemies.”
(Ibid.)
Zabelka speech continued.
”For the 300 hundred years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.
Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians. Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic.
Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn’t fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.”
(Ibid.)
”For the 300 hundred years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.
Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians. Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic.
Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn’t fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.”
(Ibid.)
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